Ben Affleck Confirms ‘Live By Night’ as His Next Directorial Project

The Internet’s ablaze with talk about this morning’s Oscar nominations, with Ben Affleck being passed over as a Best Director candidate for Argo being an especially hot discussion topic. For his part, the Oscar-winning actor/filmmaker is keeping his head down and instead looking ahead to his next project, Live By Night.

Affleck was reported a few months as entering negotiations to write and direct the Dennis Lehane adaptation (his second after Gone Baby Gone), in addition to headlining and producing. At the time, it wasn’t altogether clear whether or not this will be his next directorial effort; given Affleck’s commitment to adapting Stephen King’s The Stand and ongoing attempt to make a Whitey Bulger biopic with Matt Damon, that is.

However, whereas progress on The Stand is slow-going, Affleck informed MTV in a recent interview that Live By Night is something he’s pushing for (and expecting) to begin shooting in the foreseeable future. Hence, he recently chose to drop out of costarring with Kristen Stewart in Focus, the new comedy from directing duo Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (I Love You Phillip Morris, Crazy, Stupid, Love.).

Here is the direct quote from Affleck, on the subject:

“Basically I’m doing a movie called Live By Night and I’m trying to meet this schedule in order to do it, in order to meet the back end so that I can have it released at the right time, and I just hadn’t gotten enough writing done and it became clear that if I took that job [acting in 'Focus'] and was in Buenos Aires for three months, I was gonna miss the deadline. I had to choose between getting the movie out when I want to or doing this one, so reluctantly I chose the [former]. But I love those guys, I love Kristen, I was really excited to work with her, I think the movie’s gonna be fabulous, and I’m sure they’ll find a great guy for it.”

Live By Night marks but latest Boston-set project featuring Affleck on both sides of the camera, after Good Will Hunting and The Town (since he didn’t star in Gone Baby Gone); though, this time the setting is 1926 rather than the present. Affleck, it seems, will be playing Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a respectable Boston police captain who grows up to become an employee of the city’s most fearsome (and successful) mobsters during Prohibition-era America.

Ben Affleck in ‘The Town’

Now, I agree that Affleck’s proven himself as an excellent director of exhilarating genre entertainment, but he’s still maturing as an all-encompassing storyteller; hence, I’m not all that concerned with him (not) receiving recognition for the time being, based on the hope that his best work still lies ahead. Live By Night feels like a good vehicle for encouraging further growth in Affleck, seeing it’s similar enough to his previous projects to play to his strengths – but different enough to not allow him to inadvertently fall into a rut and repeat past mistakes.

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Kevin7 2 years ago

I just watched Gone Baby Gone again the other night and it’s a fantastic movie. I will get slammed for this but IMO it’s better than The Town. Bye no means am I saying The Town is a bad film at all but personally I think Gone Baby Gone is a small notch above…
I won’t go on a long rant about Affleck being snubbed for an Oscar nomination for Argo even though I could, I’ll just say the guy knows what he’s doing and maybe Live By Night will bring him the recognition he deserves from the Academy…

Still maturing? What exactly does that mean? The Town alone was enough to establish Affleck as a top-tier director. Argo confirmed his top-noth directing abilities. I don’t have a problem with him not being nominated for Best Director, just because I think Ang Lee should get it, but it has nothing to do with thinking Affleck is ‘still maturing’.

I think it’s also in reference to the fact that the Academy has a habit of nominating directors after they’ve established themselves a little more, or produced a more comprehensive body of work (e.g. Martin Scorsese). Obviously this does not apply in all cases, but when it comes to directors who have had good mainstream success, the Best Director Oscar sometimes seems a little more like a directorial lifetime achievement award rather than a prize for any one film…

Also, Affleck just won best director (and best picture) at the critics choice awards. His face lit up when he won best director. He looked really surprised and I was too. And I know this is just the critics choice awards, but its really crazy that the academy didn’t give him a nomination.

My only problem with this is with Ben Affleck in the leading role. I have nothing against him as an actor, but at the beginning of the book, Joe (the main character) is only in his early twenties, whereas Ben Affleck is in his forties. I’m not saying Affleck is wrong for the role, but he might just be a bit old for the role. I always pictured Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Tom Hardy as Joe while I was reading the book.

Honestly, this does not bode well for Mr.Affleck to direct something w/ big budget in the future.
Times are changing and big budget movies are handed to promising director to take chances on. Mr.Affleck should expand his horizon and start to take some large chunk of chance by directing a mega budget movie.